Lady in the Lake: Reasons Not to Miss Natalie Portman’s Thriller Series!
Natalie Portman entered the TV universe with Lady in the Lake, marking the first time we’ve seen the Oscar winner star in a series. Created by Alma Har’el, producer of Honey Boy, Lady in the Lake takes us back to 1960s Baltimore and tells the story of two women who lead very different, parallel lives, but who are connected when a murder occurs. One of them is the victim, while the other becomes obsessed with finding out what happened to her and making a radical change in her life.
Lady in the Lake: Reasons Not to Miss Natalie Portman’s Thriller Series!
It’s a series full of suspense and intrigue, but also of social commentary, and dream sequences that play with memories, trauma, and the very secrets at the heart of it all. Visually it’s powerful, the costumes are striking, and the performances are extraordinary, both from Natalie Portman and Moses Ingram, who play the two women who are on different sides of the same story. Ingram is also the narrator of this story, she is a murder victim who guides us through this story and who accompanies Portman’s character as she tries to discover the truth, but also uses this to build her career and find a purpose in life.
Natalie Portman Stars in Her First Series?
There’s no doubt that Natalie Portman is a great actress, so it’s very special to be able to see her in a series that gives us 7 episodes and around 7 hours to see her develop her character and take it from one extreme to the other. Maddie Schwartz, the woman she plays, is complex and deep, full of pain and trauma, and Portman builds her in a very human way, daring to show the cracks, the mistakes, and her worst side, along with all her good qualities. But Portman does not carry the weight of this series alone, Moses Ingram is extraordinary and powerful, showing a Cleo Johnson who is much more than a victim or a tragic story, and, as with Maddie, through her, we can also see that, despite racism, segregation, discrimination, and violence, it was possible to have good lives, happy moments and some magic.
Fiction with Elements of Reality!
Lady in the Lake is a fictional series, but part of what makes it so interesting is that it explores the real social context of Baltimore in the 1960s, which is a detail that completely affects the development of this story. We can see how segregation and racism were experienced in the 1960s and how these two factors affected things like police investigations and the attention paid to victims. We can also see the different types of discrimination that women experienced, and the roles that they were sometimes forced to play within society and their own families. Portman and her Maddie Schwartz also let us see some traditions of the Jewish community, but also the difficulties that women faced and that prevented them from being independent (in one scene, Maddie discovers that she cannot even sell her own car without her husband’s permission).
A Mystery, Many Secrets and Drama?
The story of this series begins with the disappearance of a little girl, which is what wakes Maddie up and pushes her down a complicated path. What follows is Cleo’s murder, which is much more complicated than it seems. What happens is that old memories and secrets about Maddie come to light, while secrets about Cleo’s life and what led her to become “The Woman in the Lake” after her death are also revealed. All of this coexists with family dramas and complex relationships that develop throughout the story, especially that of Maddie with her family and with a local police officer who crosses her path.
A Story Full of Clues and Details?
A bloody dress, the yellow color that repeats everywhere, and a bright blue coat are some of the important elements in the series. Here, each element tells a story, it says something about the characters, their mental state and their intentions. Each element was put there with care and attention, so it is a series in which you have to pay attention because things are revealed in unexpected ways.
